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In the post “Hunt for Star Alliance Gold” I described why I wanted Star Alliance Gold status (lounge access!), and I told the story about a crazy Rube Goldberg-ish approach to status matching that I attempted.
The match to Taj to Shargri-La to Singapore status approach ultimately failed, but a reader named Geo left a very interesting comment:
If you travel often with your family, look into crediting to Egyptair Plus, apparently you can pool miles AND status.
What, really? Could I sign up my family for this program and then simply credit a few family trips on Star Alliance flights to Egyptair in order to get and keep Star Alliance Gold status?
The answer appears to be yes.
A quick Google search showed me that all of the details were already posted by the AwardWallet blog (hat tip to Mommy Points for hat tipping AwardWallet).
Here are the basics:
- Egypt Air’s loyalty program is called EgyptAir Plus (found here).
- EgyptAir Plus offers 3 elite tiers: Silver, Gold, and Platinum.
- EgyptAir Plus Gold status gives you Star Alliance Gold status.
- To pool accounts, you must provide evidence of a direct family relationship.
- Up to 5 family members can pool together.
- To get Silver status you must earn 30,000 miles (there doesn’t appear to be a time limit for earning this first tier).
- To get to Gold status, you must get to Silver status and then earn 30,000 additional miles to get to Gold status. You have two years from the time you earn Silver status to achieve this.
- You can renew Gold status by earning 30,000 miles within 2 years from the time that you previously earned or renewed status.
- If accounts are pooled, only the primary member earns status.
Both AwardWallet and Mommy Points give mileage running examples. The basic idea is that you can earn status very easily by flying as a couple or a family.
Maybe 2 is the perfect number
With EgyptAir Plus, the bigger your family that travels together, the quicker you’ll get to Gold status. That said, Star Alliance Gold status only guarantees lounge access for yourself and one guest (found here). We discovered that the hard way at the Frankfurt airport when my wife had to wait outside the Senator Lounge. So, flying with a family is great for getting elite status, but not great for using the most valuable perk of that status.
Now that my son is about to start college in the fall, we’ll more often fly as a pair instead of a trio. So, we should be the perfect candidates to mileage run for Egypt Air status. When our son does fly with us, we can use him to help us earn and keep status, but we’ll plan to enjoy the lounge access perks when it’s just the two of us.
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Is your son getting a scholarship to FTU?
How are they about crediting both status and redeemable miles on the cheap fares?
All this for lounge access? Does it really make sense to deposit all your miles in Egyptair? Because the *G status won’t print on your UA ticket unless you input your Egyptair # … so no UA miles unless you change it at the gate every time. honestly the lounges are so mediocre it is not worth it unless you really want miles in that program.
[…] afternoon, we posted about family mileage running for Star Alliance Gold. That post explains what looks like a great hack for earning Star Alliance Gold. However, those […]
can someone work me thru the benefit of earning status on an airline if you only fly it 3-4xs a yr?
I dont get it
I was joking about the FT hat tip part.
On a serious note, for those looking at this option, one cheap way to really rack up things is when SAS has children tickets on sales of some sort. For example, SAS’s “children fly for just taxes” promotion may be quite well combined with EgyptAir’s program to rack up/retain * status on the relative cheap. But pay attention to the details.
oh gosh! really?Can’t believe what I see. It is unlikely that they are liars.
This has been getting attention on Flyertalk.com, the mothership of the realm. Perhaps FT gets a hat tip?
I use hat tips to show where I learned stuff like this. I didn’t know this was on Flyertalk.
Interesting… A couple could achieve that by taking just a single trip to Asia in biz class on Turkish Air which always connects via IST. In fact, Turkish Air LAX to PVG via IST will earn each person over 36K EQMs with 50% class bonus.